Green-eyed meanie
by NappyBones
Summary: Post-Sitch in Time AU. The Supreme One pulled out all the stops and lost. At least she could say she'd tried. But when the dolt's shattering of the Tempus Simia doesn't change a thing, it hits her hard that she'll have to live with herself-with doing what she did to Doctor D, and the world that had to suffer through that crapsack show of jealousy. Of regret and redemption.
1. Chapter 1

She should have been _furious_. As her cloak rustled through the air, coat damp against her skin with her first physical exertion in decades, she knew that now more than ever was the time to scream and spit and stamp her feet in the way she never had before. She'd taken up Drakken's shtick and run with it for the past twenty years, so what was one more? She was _pissed_. She'd _ruled_ the _world_. She could do _anything. _

But she didn't feel like doing any of the above as she plummeted. Possible and her dopey sidekick held fast to some invisible line in the timestream, and she didn't have a choice but to let them. There was blood on her left glove, where she'd managed a last lunge before Kimmy had kicked her off. She surprised herself by not_ caring_.

Because if their crackpot of a 'plan' had worked-and the giant time/space rip in the roof was hard _not_ to notice-everything under the red was going to reset.

She felt sick. She figured it the fall as she swallowed a cloud of kicked up marble dust, sharp and coarse and stinging her chest. But it was more than that and she knew it. Her lips drew into a line, trying to grasp at whatever the hell had ever been elusive to her. But it was like trying to grab at a wasp with her nails and it wriggled from her grip, stinging high and mighty on its way out and then she didn't _know_ if she _wanted_ to know-

Her head hit the ground, skull and clenched teeth rattling. The thought flew out her ears as Kimmy blipped out of existence and everything hurt at once, inside and out. Shego cried out, when, why, she didn't know. It left and then there was nothing in her chest, rising and stilling as she held her breath.

And waited. And waited. And waited.

And abso-lutely _nothing_ happened.

Her face fell as the pain came crashing back.

"Son of a _bitch_," the Supreme One said, rubbing the back of her head as she made to stand. Something crunched as she rose. Her foot caught on her cloak, and in her shaking rage she lit it up and tore it off, giving it a couple stamps that cracked the concrete under.

She wheeled around, eyes blazing _murder bloody murder_ on the rebels, sloven and slack-jawed ingrates who'd never even _tried_ sitting down and shutting up. They responded much in kind, but she had a fix for that.

"_Drakken_," she shouted, the roof of her mouth tingling. "_Get them_!"

Drakken groaned. Not the sound he always made before a scornfully followed order. Not the sound his colleagues envied him for. His groan was raspy, using every bit of his coarse accent, and cut itself off with a coughing fit.

The Supreme One stopped, and turned. The dust cleared just in time to show Drakken up to his pits in rubble-chunks of her stone busts and scraps of her banners scattered across the room in the circular, domino pattern they'd fallen.

Shego's heart clenched. "Fine," she ground out. "Fine. Fine. Everyone clear the rubble and I promise I'll only collar you."

She decided to work out later whether she was lying or not.

When there came no response from her newly elected pit crew, she turned, gloves clenched tight enough the claws broke leather and pricked at her palms. "Well?" she said. "Get to it!"

But they didn't look like they'd be clearing the rubble anytime soon. Actually, they didn't look like they'd be listening anytime soon-not even Killigan and Monkeyfist, whose eyes burned holes into her. And all of a sudden the Doctor didn't seem so high priority.

Possible's siblings, tweedle dum and tweedle dee blinked as if one. "Shouldn't the timeline be back in place by now?"

Wade, towering above and behind them blinked. "It should be," he rumbled, in a voice well past puberty; her head throbbed at the sound of it.

As Monique threw a rifle strap over her shoulder, she blinked too. Bunch a' drones. "Uh, Wade? What's the sitch up in here?"

Wade, for all his size, seemed bashful. "I-I don't know, Monique," he said, grinding one of his feet against the other. "But if I had to take an educated guess? Ron might have screwed the pooch when he broke the time monkey."

Monique sighed. "O lord." Then, blinking rapidly, "Wait. Where are they then? Where's Kim?"

Wade's throat worked, swallowing. "I…I don't know. They could be in another timeline, they could be back in their own, or…"

Monique stared at him. "You're kidding," she said, quavering.

"No way," Tim said, chains clinking as they rose and fell.

"You gotta be _kidding _me," Jim stared up at the roof, not a tell left that their sister had ever existed. "She's gone?"

The Supreme One stared at them, the huffing and heaving savages that had nearly cost her a world. Hands slack by her side, she stared at people who'd cared and were caring about the cheerleader and her chum. By now they'd either been thrown aside or torn to shreds by the timestream. And they were going to _bawl_ over them? _These_ were the rebels that had raised her Hell? Hah! What a joke!

_So why aren't you laughing?_

The Supreme One shook her head, pain ringing from all sides. She clung to it like a lifeline as she cleared her throat.

"What a shame," the Supreme One said, feeling in her coat for the remote. A glare at Killigan and Monkeyfist said all it had to. At the sound of her, Possible's posse turned, radiating rage, but the Supreme One didn't miss the wet shine of lost hope in their eyes as Killigan's chassis churned.

"But I don't need that stupid thing to finish you off. Duff, Monty."

There! Her fingers tightened around the frame.

"Get them!" She whipped it out of an inner pocket, straining a sneer as-as-as-

The stupid thing fell apart in her outstretched hand, buttons, glass and dials dropping, _thunk, click, clack,_ to the floor. And she realised, with a touch of panic, that it hadn't been the cape.

Her sneer turned terse. _'Oy.'_

The rebel scum stared impassively at her. All except for the mole rat which,, eyes widening, spoke up.

"The Remote is gone!" He cried, in a ridiculously deep, suave voice she would have laughed at on a better day-when the little rat was choking on a collar. "The slaves are free!"

Killigan and Monkeyfist heard-too much to hope they wouldn't. They turned around, eyes wide, mouths an O, both sharpening into points as they stepped forward.

The Supreme One took another step back. "Drakken," she said, calling to the mass of muscle still half-buried under the rubble. Even with everything against her, even without the collars…

Nothing. Killigan and Monkeyfist closed in on her, and she felt herself break into a sweat. Twenty years ago she'd have jumped into stance, hands flaring and now-

_Now you ran from the buffoon, _she thought. _Yikes, the Supreme One really does delegate._

"Drakken?" she called, with ever-increasing urgency. She turned to the rubble. The rubble had been turned over, but he wasn't there.

He was-gone. Vamoosed. A puff of smoke couldn't have driven the point further home.

The Supreme One's brain kicked itself, and then kicked into overdrive. "Hey, fellas," she said, stretching her hands out in a welcome-all gesture. Killigan and Monkeyfist didn't stop.

"May-_be_ we got off on the wrong foot."

_For twenty years? _

She took a bunch of steps back as she laughed nervously at the thought. It came out brittle and snapped off. "How about a three-way partnership? You, you and me, we could all…split it up."

They still didn't stop. Killigan had a clear shot-Monkeyfist was close enough to pounce. The Supreme One's brain kicked itself again.

"Ye've raised us hell, lassie," and the Supreme One surprised herself by stiffening. In fear. Of the stupid, simpering shell of a Scot turned golf-kart. "Be only fair we paid you back."

"For once, Killigan," Monkeyfist said, eyes darkening, "I concur." And he pounced up high, hands and feet curled her way as Killigan ejected a glowing, golf-shaped grenade down under.

"_Eep_," the Supreme One squeaked, before turning a hundred and eighty. And _running_. Her legs pumped back and forth, carrying her as far away from the palace's centre as possible. _Possible!_ She could have screamed it. This was all her fault, she thought as she stopped at the head of the stairs. Why couldn't she have just stayed well the hell _away_-

Monkeyfist's nails cut into her thoughts, dragging down her back. The Supreme One screamed as she fell, blindly flinging a flame back as all her thoughts concentrated on the _right now_. Tumbling down the stairs, she caught the upside-down sight of a jumping, gibbering ape, clutching at burning fur that reached her nostrils.

The Supreme One's nose twitched as her hands shot out and grabbed a step, tendons screaming at the lurch stop. She winced through her teeth, about to put a hand to her back before she heard, then saw Killigan come to a stop at the top, chuting a golf ball that hit the curve behind her.

Eyes widening, the Supreme One bolted down the curve and grabbed the plastic ball mid-air, throwing it over her shoulder before she bolted down the steps.

She was well within the range of the blast by the time she heard Killigan's timer tick. Throwing herself forward, she felt the blast propel her further, slamming her against the glass just as it shattered, glass shards careening to the ground and exposing the green skyline. The Supreme One's hands broke into a sweat made unbearable by her gloves. The foundations of her palace were exploding in a puff of flames, smoke whisking past her into the open air; and for a brief, manic moment, she thought of the crowds below, watching empire die, crying-

Crock, crock, _crock_. They were _cheering_ and she knew it.

Throwing her arms out, she propelled herself back as her heart beat madly at her chest, threatening to tip her over. She kept flapping her arms until her back was to the wall.

Crouching against the wall, she patted down the fire clinging to her hips and ankles. She paused to eyeball the way back. Blocked. Hers was clear, further down the stairs, and in the tinted sunlight lit up green like an old emergency exit. It led straight out of the palace grounds.

The Supreme One swallowed a scream as she followed the lights, running past what was left of the engraved glass, shards of her face staring back at her. Her lungs burned like she knew they never had before-not once twenty years ago, when she'd kept herself ready for every eventuality (even the stupid ones, she thought) _(fondly)_, and not once since.

_I'm going to kill them_, she thought, letting her thoughts wander. She'd be expressing them soon enough. Her thoughts fell to the first place she could draw back and attack-the countless checkpoints littering the long roads.

Despite its tight space in a miasma of rage, red and bitter and choking, a part of her spoke up. _'Ah yes, the toll trolls. Because the locals won't be tearing _them_ to shreds when they hear you've been knocked off your high horse.' _

The Supreme One snarled, who or what at she didn't know. She stopped ten stairs from the shaking ground floor, eyed the green rug as if there might be a rake under, and jumped anyway. _'When I find Doctor D-'_

The Supreme One felt it before she saw it-a blue blur that barrelled straight into her, sending her sprawling mid-air. Her head hit stone for the second time today, and this time around it sang a high note. As she slumped, the back of her tongue tasted blood, the Supreme One forced herself to look up. Drakken floated in doubles, then triples, then quadruples, gliding effortlessly through the air as if the powers of duplication and flight had just now occurred to him.

She was reeling, she knew that. But in spite of that, the Supreme One didn't miss the roil in his eyes; the ramrod straight back; the hands twitching and turned her way, one sprained horribly wrong but seemingly unaware of it. She stared up at him, struggling to breathe against the warm waves of heat coming from his straining form, and shuddered.

'_Oh, that Doctor D?' _

_Shego. _

No, not Shego. The Supreme One.

_Hrmm. That makes it worse._

He could do that-split Shego and the Supreme One in two, but he couldn't resolve to destroy only one of them. Because Shego was the Supreme One, so, so, so-what the _devil_ was he asking of himself?

The Supreme One _(Shego)_ stirred, twitching, a head of hair blacker than the namesake berries convulsing with her, and Drakken thrashed out the urge to fall by her side.

Sweat simmered on his intolerably warm muscles, some of it new. He'd struck Shego. He could tell her and himself it had been an accident but sitting on the side of that staircase, tearing the collar to pieces between his hands pointed to purpose.

"Doctor D?" he heard the Supreme One say, faint and so un-Shego like that he was suddenly very, very scared _(for her)_ of her. On his arm a red, vaguely Supreme One-shaped archipelago glowed, but the pain was far away and he couldn't imagine caring.

"Yes," he said, instinctively, before he could bite it back. His mouth was hot and dry and churning out more saliva than he knew what to do with.

"Doctor D," she said again, then paused. Back to the wall, one of her shaking arms flush from claw marks _(bleeding, oh egads, is she okay?)_ as it held to the wall, she stood up. "It's me, you _complete idiot_."

An old-new temper flared up. "I am not an idiot," he _(cried)_ declared.

"Oh, you're not?" the Supreme One spat. "My bad, my bad. It's not like your stupid _blab's_ what got us here in the first place!"

Drakken's shoulders rose and fell, rose and fell. The idiot was guilty and _he_ _knew _it-

"I thought the timeline was going to reset." His shoulders fell. He huffed the words like they'd be his last.

_May-be. _

"What?"

"I said, I thought the timeline was going to reset!" Drakken exploded. "I thought, if I could just give them a moment-if they could just get to the Time Monkey-then maybe-maybe," Drakken wiped the spit from his lips. "Maybe I wouldn't be like this, maybe _Killigan_ would be fine, _you_ would be fine-I…"

"I thought everything was going to fix itself." He wiped at his face again, scrubbing around the eyes with his unbroken hand. Staring at her with strained, bloodshot eyes he hoped very much that she'd understand.

The Supreme One stared at him, unblinking, uncomprehending the moment before the ceiling shook, sending dust plummeting down.

Then, "you did this on _purpose_?"

Drakken drooped. No, she wouldn't. His shoulders shot up as he let loose a deafening torrent of complete _nonsense_. "_You just said that_," he snarled, teeth so tightly packed she was suddenly afraid he'd chip them.

"Everything you've done, and _you just said that_."

The Supreme One stamped at the floor, snapping a tile. "_No_. You do _not_ get to blame me for everything."

"Why not?" his hands curled into fists. "This is _all you_. I don't know who else could possibly be spade-goaded!"

"Scapegoated," she said, sneering.

"Whatever!" He threw his hands up, wincing as the broken one flailed by the wrist. Part of her, the part long under wraps cringed.

"You're a _traitor_," she said, jabbing a finger his way.

"And you're _not Shego_."

She flinched, a shock running to and through her bones.

_Your name_, came the thought out of black, _your name your name your name-_

Anger clanged viciously in her chest. Yeah. Her name.

The staircase caved beside him, sending plumes that stung Drakken's eyes. He didn't care as he watched her thrust a hand through her coat, searching for the-for the remote.

_The thing that stings and hurts and smokes and-_

His head and heart smashed a thousand brass cymbals together, frozen stiff as her hand swept through her inner pockets like a lump. It was five seconds before she stopped, brow stilling, then twitching. And Drakken knew something was off.

"I'm gonna pretend you didn't say that," she said coolly, hand falling slack aside.

He licked marble dust from his painfully dry lips. "Say what? She-go?"

He could tear her teeth grinding from here. "Mmhm. That."

"Why not? _Shego_, why not?"

She felt the raw, ticklish urge to scream again. "Are you trying to get yourself killed?"

Drakken sniffed. "I don't think you'll kill me."

_Epitome of a safe bluff. _She stopped a snort short.

"And I don't think you have the remote either." His voice went one way, then the other.

The Supreme One swallowed. "Does it matter?"

_This_, she tried to telecommunicate, _is a thrown bone. _

His shoulders rose and fell, rose and fell. He didn't answer and she could only hope-she could only think he'd take it. If he knew what was good for him. And her.

Drakken didn't let himself think through the implications of charging his _(slaver) (traitor) (friend)_ with his teeth bared. There was blood in his brain, straining even as it shut off, and he knew he must have looked every part a mad dog to her. Eyes widening, both hands outstretched in the style of a _stop!_ sign, she shouted something whisked away by the wind in his ears.

She threw herself aside just as his shoulder careened into the newly-cleaned wall, cracking it as the damp shards dug into his skin. He huffed-_it hurt!_-but didn't cry.

_Don't._ Her voice rang in his head. She'd squatted down and said it to him, hugging her cape to her. They'd been two years in. _Don't cry. Come on. You think the rebels'll stop themselves for you?_

The Supreme One scrambled to her feet. "Doctor D, _what are you doing?_"

_I don't know, _he tried to scream. And nearly choked on his own spit. _I don't know and I don't want to anymore. _

The Supreme One sidestepped his swipe, and blinded as he was by momentum, he could've sworn to seeing those green eyes and face scrunching up, on the verge of _(tears? Never)_ nothing he cared for.

_This?_ came the Supreme One's staircase conscience. _This is all you. _

"Doc," she said, breathless, "it's the roids! They're getting to your head-get it together-"

Drakken shot a hand out, wrapping the whole thing around her throat. The words _(what? What could you possibly say?)_ tapered off as she gasped, gloves clawing at his hand. He slammed the Supreme One to the ground, her head thrown back and forth like a bobble as her grip slackened. The Supreme One's pupils contracted then shrunk then contracted again. His mind unhelpfully supplied the symptoms of concussion. That was the intention, he screamed back at it. And still his mind yipped and yelped like a terrified terrier, _what are you doing what are you DOING it's SHEGO!_

Shego's ears rang as she felt the clamps around her neck tighten, and tighten, and tighten until his thumbs were against her fast-bobbing apple.

_What the heck? What the hell? _Even as Drakken snarled and shook and shook _her _and stared her dead in the eyes she couldn't quite draw the line between points A and B. How had they gotten _here_?

_Oh, please don't play dumb,_ came that voice again, snipping and unbidden. _Second hand embarrassment's a thing, you know. _

Drakken raised his other hand, ignoring the hurt in it and _squeezed_, squeezed like if he tried hard enough, he could wring the Shego out of the Supreme One. And if by chance he could _(please, please, please!)_ she'd pop out reeling, and have nothing to do with the Supreme One. And if by chance he couldn't, he hoped he could be so quick it wouldn't hurt at all, not very much.

_The whole strangulation shtick's a waste of your time and theirs_, instructional Supreme One supplied. He couldn't remember if she'd ever actually said it. _Just make the motions-like this-_she jerked her hands suddenly in the air_-and you'll both be better off for it._

His hands grew clammy-er than they were already. Yes. Yes, he could-he could do that.

"_Drakken_, _stop_," she managed before his squeeze cut it off. Her brain blared in warning, hands splayed against his arms, legs kicking at the air as the hands on her throat tightened and tightened and _tightened_.

Shego lit up, not caring to gauge herself, and dragged her gloves along his free arm.

Drakken huffed, and puffed, and his face turned peachy with the pain as the blood stuck to his fingers but he didn't let go. Mother had raised no quitter, and _(mother would hate you if she knew)_ he was doing what had to be done!

The Supreme One clawed for breath for she-had-no-idea-how-long before her hands began to slump against his arm. She felt Drakken giving her a shake, her arms falling off like flies-and for a terrified second she thought he was going to snap her neck-but it never happened. After a few seconds his hands felt more like a dull, distant throb, his sweat ointment around the site. If she closed her eyes, she bet, it'd almost be like the Doc was giving her a shakedown by the shoulders, like _hey! Are you dying on me, Shego? I'd-I'd rather you didn't!_

She closed her eyes.

He made the motions, he pulled back and then his hands slacked. _Why?_ his thrumming head screamed. _Why did you do that?_

Drakken stared into those shiny eyes, shrinking and spinning and so terribly _confused_, closed now but still burning in his sight, and he knew full well why he'd done it. And why he couldn't-quite-do that.

Maybe if she'd been the Supreme One all along, biting and cloying, he'd do it different, but she hadn't, and he couldn't.

Drakken let her go. She fell on her side, a terrible wheezing sound escaping her as her hands flew to her throat. The skin round which he'd _(squeezed)_ was shades of olive and red. The Supreme One gasped, and gasped, and gasped again and kept at it, seizing as much air as she could as she felt along her inflamed throat, flinching at her own insistent touch.

She stared at the shiny floor, one hand feeling at the solid surface as she watched her reflection shaking, stealing at the air, and repeat. It might have been one minute or five before she looked up, a sharp pain rocketing up and down her throat like she'd swallowed glass as she stared at Drakken. He stood there, motionless like she'd never known him, shoulders slumped forward as he stared at his own hands. The knuckles were white and the blood had crusted under his nails and the eyes staring at it couldn't decide which was worse, dancing between the two spots before, hands falling, he noticed her.

"You're still here?" he said, voice a stiff lilt.

She drew back. Part of her wanted very much to say something-but one look at that blank face, and she knew the words would have been wasted. And what was there to say?

_I'm sorry? _

Her better half offered something helpful for once, but the words caught in her throat. She wasn't stupid enough to think that'd change a thing.

And if it wouldn't change a thing, and if it wouldn't _matter_ if she meant it-

Drakken watched her inch back, step by step, her face cringing as she swallowed. Her lips twitched like she wanted to say something, but she never did. She glanced behind her to the exit, green sky and all, then back at him. Shego let loose a sigh that shook the both of them to the bone.

Drakken blinked, and in the beat his eyelids were back up she was gone. He could only assume she'd rounded the corner to freedom-or whatever closest equivalent she could get her hands on, after everything.

Good _(god, please don't go I need you) _riddance.

* * *

**Inspired by The Ones That Never Happened Chapter 3: Symbiosis by Ninnik Nishukan, and by Work in Progress: Study of an Evil Genius Chapter 13: No Time, Assorted Ficlets Chapter 52: Side Effects, 53 Things I Learned in my Career as a Supervillain Chapters 16-18 and practically everything by Purplegirl761 respectively. Much love, if you haven't already check them out!**


	2. Chapter 2

**Funky chronology incoming. Seasons 1-2, Season 3, So the Drama, Season 4 up to Mad Dogs and Aliens, Sitch in Time. This be So the Drama grounds. With that said...**

* * *

_Crud. _

It was the first thought that ran through Shego's head as it hit the tower-the electricity came right after. Boiling water was _nothing_ to the scalding feeling that shot across her skin, hot and burning, the overpowering scent of smoke killing her nose. All she could concentrate on was biting back a scream before the tower toppled against her, batting her to the ground like a nuisance fly.

She screamed. She definitely screamed-her throat was raw on the way down-but she couldn't remember doing it.

She noticed the antenna too late to do anything about it besides turn and lose an eye. It slammed into the side of her head, eardrum exploding as her head was jerked aside. A damp fog rolled in. She felt rubble everywhere-in her face, her hair, her limbs-and all of it registered as rain. When her feet hit the ground they crumpled like cards.

A lucid thought sprang to mind as she hit the ground: if the comet had never come, she'd have died tonight. Kim Possible, _the _Kim Possible had tried the line. She'd stared her straight in the face and, no tricks, lashed out with a kick that had found its way past her form and flung her into the nearby tower. And she _had _to have seen the whole thing collapse on her. Did she know if that'd kill her? Did she care?

Shego should have gotten a kick out of it-on a better day _would've_-but under the rubble, all she could do was shiver. She'd brought Kimmy low. Somehow, that wasn't cause for confetti.

Rain was still falling, and hard. The sound was a harsh pounding in her already-ringing ears, every drop in itself an alert to _go,_ _get up, go_! as her heart went off like a caged hare. But she couldn't. She just…couldn't. Her nerves felt like they'd been pulled to breaking point and left there. She cringed at every twitch that sent the tower coursing through her again.

Hurt. She made a sound; groan, grunt, sniffle she didn't know. Her eyes were at half-mast and no matter how hard she tried to open or close them, she didn't have the energy for either. A bleary, bloodshot middle ground made her eyes sting.

She tried to drag herself up on her knees and knuckles, but her back stung as it connected with a piece of the tower, and the thought of pushing it aside and _crawling _her way out of here was too much. She fell more than slumped, jaw hitting the damp concrete as it clamped on her already swollen tongue.

She could barely _think_, her head was so heavy. And her heart _refused_ to settle. It was exhausting feeling it beat against her ribs like a battering ram. How much of that tower's charge had she taken?

She had zero idea of the time before she trusted her thumping heart again. Scraping at the ground with her tattered gloves, she flipped herself on her side. One ear faced to the sky sent nothing back to her brain except the feeling of crusted blood and rain.

_Great, _she thought, teeth grit and eyes wet, _just…great. _

She'd hoisted herself up on a shaky elbow, one hand thrusting the slab aside before a blinding light hit her square in the face.

A sharp pain started behind her eyes-she blinked before throwing a hand up. "Settle on the exposure, Doc," she grouched, more out of habit than circumstance.

Then she twitched, limbs flaring as they kicked, and circumstance kicked in. "And get us _out_ of here."

Her voice cracked on the words. Dimly, she wondered if the Doc would recognise them.

At the sound of static, Shego stiffened. "Found her," said a voice so tinged with venom she couldn't be sure it wasn't on their payroll.

_Get up. __**Now!**_

She clutched to a damp steel beam as she dragged herself up. She had no idea where the sound had come from and her eyes weren't doing her any good. Everything was a black, white and blue blur. She blinked and it sharpened, but not by much. Shoving her soaked hair aside, she wheeled around. A police officer stared at her, his grip on his holster white-knuckled as rain dripped off his peaked cap. At his contempt, Shego straightened.

"You were a hero."

She blinked. Someone who remembered. She'd hoped never to meet a Go City goer again. "Past tense," she said before she lit up.

And screamed. _Holy-_

She hunched over, staring at her shaking hands through a tightly wound brow. They smoked and stung without a pinch of plasma.

_What?_

She tried again, a sucker for more pain as the glow sputtered and went out, leaving a dull throb in its place.

"What?" She said it to herself, then shot her head up at him. "_What?_" He said nothing, did nothing as his hand fell from his holster. His stare didn't soften, but there was something new to it she knew too well. The same stupid shlock that she'd had thrown to her like a bone, that her brothers had somehow taken with shaky smiles and empty thanks-that got her hands wringing then and had her hands wringing now.

Just twenty or so minutes ago she'd have rained a parade on the bastard. Rain done, all she had for him _now_ was a stop-you-right-there glare. "_Don't_."

His shrug was faintly sardonic as he lifted a pair of cuffs from his belt. "You deserve it."

She turned her head to the sky, like maybe _that guy_ would offer an explanation. Nothing. Nothing. If He was there, He was too busy bawling his eyes out to notice.

Her lips quivered, half out of rage and half out of the sudden, crushing urge to cry. It was _that_ easy for the officer to walk up and crank the cuffs to her back. She could've gone down kicking and punching, but without at least the promise of her powers it just felt…petty. Pointless.

That and her nerves were fried. She swallowed drily as she was dragged by the arm. Even from _here_, with her ears playing a shrill staccato beat, she could hear Drakken putting up a hell of a fuss.

"What did you do?" he said. "Kim Possible? What did you _do_?"

_Can't! Breathe!_ By law of conservation, it was his most pressing priority. But Drakken hadn't pegged himself a law-abiding citizen for years now, and besides there were _so_ much more important things than breathing right now-much as he'd like to make sure all of Middleton couldn't keep at it.

Kim Possible had done it. He shook with energy he didn't even know he'd had, tremoring on the van's seat as he stared at Kim Possible. Not smug this time. Hate was radiating from the both of them, hers a choking first, and yet his a close second-

No._ Ron Stoppable. _He was _right there_.

The one person in the world who'd ever jumped to a well-timed _boo _from Drakken himself was glaring at him like he was the gunk on his favourite shoe. It made Drakken's tummy sting, and he had to swallow the urge to throw up before his thoughts came together again.

Then-then a respectable third. The night was cold and he'd never known himself so soaked before, but before the despair could sink its teeth in, Drakken drew from his fast-thinning bank of full-fat evil and concentrated it at Kim Possible. There and then, he'd have willed the heat death of the universe if it'd coalesce into his eyeballs and let him laser the Possibles into tiny, insignificant atoms.

_Ridiculous! She's just trying to scare you! She'd never stoop this low! _

_He_ had tonight. Who was to say she hadn't fought fire with fire…extinguisher?

_But she can't, she just can't! It's not possible!_

"_Anything is possible for a Possible."_

_Rrrrnngh!_

"_Nothing_," Kim Possible said, _rudely_ cutting a swath through his red-misted mind. But she kept glancing over her shoulder, aside, _anywhere_ but at his eyes, and he knew she knew.

"Then _where _is_ she_?" His voice broke, skittering into high pitch, and he couldn't have cared less. "Why aren't _you _looking for her?"

Barely over the sound of the deafening downfall, Drakken thought he heard her teeth grinding. "Because I can't be sure I won't kick her while she's down."

It sent his world spinning off-kilter again. Off it went and Drakken let it, because whatever world was being made here he wanted no part in it.

_Where's Shego where's Shego where's Shego where's Shego-_

Oof. His face felt runny. He hoped to heavens he wasn't doing what he thought he was doing but he couldn't tell, his cheeks were so wet already.

_That's-good, then! No one can tell if you're-_

"_Kim Possible!_" he screamed, cutting that thought well off. "You think you're all that, but you're just a murderer!"

At that, her face fell. _Riposte!_ Drakken thought, teeth gnashing on some intangible but tangy thing between his molars.

The buffoon-_Ron_-stepped in, placing a hand on her shoulder. "Dude. If Kay Pee's a murderer, what does that make _you_?"

_Error. Does not compute. _

He heard the words, but they slid right off him like blood off a damp duck's back.

No. All he had to do was deny it, and it wasn't true. He was no murderer. The whole world had been set on fire tonight, and else-whereabouts, he knew it must be true, the fires were still raging, the Diablos down but their nozzles not outed, but he wasn't a murderer. For just one long night, the world had been force-fed the fury of the _genius_ denied his birthright, gotten just a _taste_ of the hard life, the heart-poundingly palpable fear, the door-thumping, the pitch black and the sour-smelling, rock-hard gum stuck to the walls of the same place the dolts were dumping their _books_ in. No. He was _not_ a murderer.

But no one was stuffing Drew Lipsky in a locker again.

_No. Of course not. They'll be stuffing you into a penitentiary. _

He didn't smile at that-the thought of mother made his tummy hurt again-but he didn't flinch from it either, not in front of _them_. And of course, Possible caught on.

"Are you _proud_?" she said, shriller than he'd ever heard her. At the sound of that, he shot up.

Kim Possible was angry-Kim Possible was really, _really_ angry!-and that should have been cause for alarm, written all over her face, but all he could think of when he saw Possible's face was a smirk that didn't suit her as she watched Shego-

He still couldn't breathe right, not really. As Possible stared at him, fuming, he saw his chance to pay her back kindly, and an all-teeth grin crossed his lips.

"Are _you_?" he said, leaning forward from his spot in the van as he drank in her shock and not-quite-awe.

Stupid. Childish. He'd deserve it, he knew, if Possible leapt into the van and beat him half to death. Or all the way.

She was getting there, it looked like, two steps forward as Drakken pressed his back to the van wall and pleaded with his cells to phase through it, before Ron placed another hand on her shoulder. "_Kim_. He's not worth it."

Possible looked pained. For once he could relate.

_Yes I am! _he wanted to shout (_of pride? Of shame?)_. But he wasn't going to look a firing squad in the eye. No matter how much he wanted to test Kim Possible now, he _couldn't_ be done, he just _couldn't_, not until he'd paid her a thousand times over and then some!

_And you plan to do that how exactly? _Drakken froze at the sound of shoulder Shego.

She was right. No one else had broken him out of prison before. And if Shego really was-well. No one else ever would.

Drakken sucked in as much air through his teeth as he could. His nose felt dangerously snotty. One good sniffle and he wouldn't stop.

And that was when Shego was rounded into the van, black head of hair popping into view as Drakken's heart leapt into his mouth.

"_Shego_," he sobbed.

"Shut up," said whoever was holding her by the elbow, fingers poised like they were putting distance from a filthy tissue. "She's _fine. _Get in or I'll drag you_._"

Shego stumbled towards the van, eyes to the fast-solidifying ground. She glanced up and her neck winced at the whiplash. But she caught what she'd needed to-Drakken in one piece.

_Good. I'll tear him apart myself. _

"Oh. _Oh_," Drakken breathed. He was shivering in the suit and his hair was soaked. His face was nursing a Possible-patented welt and the ground was scattered with neutered, nothing Diablos and everything that could've gone wrong had gone ahead and _gone wrong_ on the one night it needed to go anything _but_, and it had taken Eric and the_ world_ and his ego from him. But it hadn't taken _that_.

The air he took after realising that was in gulps, big, greedy gulps that filled his lungs with the sickly, silly urge to giggle.

"_Th-"_ He bit his lip hard. "Good," he said instead.

"Good," said the officer, darkening a shade as he shoved Shego into the van. She hit the floor, breathing in, out, in as she dragged herself up and into a seat across him, wincing for every piercing, stabbing feeling in her bones. Never been this much of an effort before.

It wasn't until the henchmen came in that the doors were shut, rain, thunder and Possible locked out. It should've been comforting, Drakken thought, but it wasn't, not in the slightest. For one, it was dark in here. And for two, there was a terrifying finality to the sound of steel latches sliding across steel doors. He'd heard it a _gazillion_ times before, but there was a totality to it now that settled in his stomach like an acid-repellent stone. Like they'd lost what they hadn't even known had been the good life, lost it once and forever.

Drakken shuddered, only a little bit from his soggy state. Anything but. Anything to get that back. He glanced at Shego, but with her head down all he saw was a black spill of hair, parts of it strung out like some idiot had been twirling their hands through it. Outrage without outlet left him shaking.

They'd turned a corner when the window flashed and the clap came three seconds later.

It was a gross understatement to say Shego flinched. She jumped_,_ every part of her stiff and rising at once, eyes shooting all over the place like pinballs as a look he'd never ever ever ever _ever _seen on her before took hold.

"Shego-"

She turned sharply at the sound of the Doc. The sight of him in the flash in the flesh was surreal. It was that stupid _suit_, she thought, the sparkles on it that made him hard to look at in the blinding light. She kept her eyes above it, on his sky-blue face and wide, worried eyes staring her right back. Putting her chin to her chest, she killed a flutter that had no right to be there tonight.

Then she twitched it upwards, sharpening it to a point. "This is all your _fault_."

Drakken's throat turned to cotton. "No," he yelped. "_No._ This isn't my fault! Everything was going as planned-everything was going like it was supposed to-"

_We struck at midnight! _It pained him more than anything that the thought was in the past tense. Doodled. Dusted. Done. They'd struck at midnight, he'd thrown his entire self on the oh-so rickety scales of destiny and it had _still _tipped the other way, catapulting him off into some damp and grungy distance that looked suspiciously like a cell bloc.

_Again! _Again, he sucked air through his teeth, let his grimace wobble away, because if he tried to straighten it his eyes would take their chances and wring him dry.

"Evidently _not_," Shego spat. "You complete _idiot_. I can't _believe_ I thought this was going to work, what the _hell_ was I thinking-"

"_Shego_," he said. It took all the breath left in him and _still _felt grossly inadequate, irregular. His throat itched. Why was she _yelling_? Why was she swearing? Why was she being so _mean_?

"Shego, it's-it's fine, really!"

"_Really." _

"_Yes_, yes, really!" and he forced himself on, not a sentence in sight. "_Rrgk_-you. You-break yourself out, and then you break _me_ out, and-and we can…"

_We can what?_

This had been the one. This had _really _been the one. He'd forced himself to bury all the banter and cutesies and itches in his chest in the deepest six feet hole he could find. He'd patted down the spot and not even bothered with an X-if he won, he'd never come back for it! What had it ever done for him anyway but keep him second-guessing? No, it wouldn't do, he'd thought then-he'd work better without it.

And he _had. _It was cold without the warmth, but it was intoxicating, like hypothermia without the purple nastiness-he'd been floating on office-cold air, watching it all from the comfort of heated seats, sleep-starved brain staring at room-sized screens until it _clicked_ and came to him.

But it was still starved now, and nothing had clicked, and no matter how hard he clawed for the words they never came.

"We…can." He finished lamely.

Shego stared. He closed his eyes in anticipation of a crude, cutting remark that'd clip them right open again.

"I lost my powers."

Drakken blinked.

"Say what?"

"I _lost my powers_," she said, with such vehemence that the henchman beside her leaned hard into his co.

Drakken blinked again. _Words! _he thought. _Please, words! A sentence! Sense unnecessary! _But they stayed well out of spouting range. He had nothing to say.

Shego glared at him, keeping the tears well behind her eyes. Well, he _wouldn't_, would he?

Drakken licked his lips, tongue jerking from the numbing welt. "Is-is it permanent?"

Her shoulders rose and fell like there were straps to them. "I don't know."

Silence.

Drakken swallowed. "It doesn't matter," he said, "as long as we're-"

"It doesn't _matter_?" Shego wanted to scream, to hurl something at his head. "_Doc. _Do you not get it? This-this gig of ours, it's _over._ Name _one time_ you even came _close _to world domination without me."

"I-I-the _Bebes_," he screamed.

Shego scoffed, giving the rapier in his ribs a flick. "Oh, your little vendetta trip. Ye-ah, how'd _that _go for you?"

_Why are you doing this? _Drakken wanted to cry. _I'm trying to help!_

"_You_," and he came dangerously close to choking on his spit, "you don't need your powers to protect me, or help me with my inventions-I'll-I'll break you out." He'd done it once before, he distinctly remembered-Commodore Puddles had been _huge_-

"_You_. You're going to break me out of prison." Shego hacked out a laugh as harsh and grating as her nail file.

Irate, he tried to recount Area Fifty-One. _"Gkkk-!" _

_No no no no no, words, not now!_

"You can't even break your_self_ out," she started, before the flash came again. Forcing her lips into a line, she pressed her entire self to the van's side, grit her teeth and closed her eyes. The thunder came in as she kept herself still.

Drakken's heart twisted into knots at the sight of it. Shego, back to the wall, eyes and mouth clamped shut. Like she was scared. Like she really thought she was going to die. The spite ping-ponged between them evaporated.

"Shego-"

"Forget it," she said, muted more than he'd ever known her. "Just…forget it."

He stared at her for a while after she said that. Her hands still stung, Middleton was still bawling buckets and all she really wanted to do in the moment was cry, sleep, and have a tall glass of water in no particular order. But her heart still _hurt_ it was beating so fast, and she figured (correctly, as it turned out) it'd keep at it until all the excess electricity was out.

_At least I got her_, she thought, and she wished she'd fallen asleep right after that thought. It would've been perfect for it. Of course, her heart was still going at it. And so she played the scene in her head, the moment she'd raked a claw across Kim Possible's arm. With luck, little miss priss'd be too preoccupied with dragging the _survivors_ from the rubble to notice how deep the wound was. Maybe she'd pass out. One for one.

She blinked, and an entirely different pain sprang up in her heart, hurting _so_ much more.

_No. Oh, please no._

But if she jerked her head towards the thick plastic pane they'd come from, she could hear it just fine. The sound of fire. The wailing of sirens and of people. The van jerked to a stop.

"Drakken."

He lifted his heavy head her way.

"People died tonight." Her voice broke apart, splintered into pieces they never had before.

Drakken went stiff as a rod, head shot up.

"What?"

But she never repeated herself.

He convulsed, and for one long second he thought he was going to throw up. His stomach roiled, again and again, at the invasive thought of the Diablos raining death and destruction from their glorious places nigh-high. He'd been so proud of it just _minutes _ago, why did he care _now_? This-this was _absurd_! He was clinical, he was _detached_, he was-

Heavens. He'd always thought himself the head of every trodden-on Drew Lipsky live-alike out there. _Hell. _How many of them had looked up and died tonight? There must've been one in Washington, in Paris, in Sydney, in Samarkand-there were too many places he'd launched them and too many Drew Lipskys he must have run roughshod over. But _how many_, he thought as he broke into a cold sweat. He needed a figure, something specific and sensible, something that could make _sense_ of this-

The doors were flung open, and the cold breeze came in. That got him. Then he really _did _throw up, staining his suit as he brought up a piecemeal breakfast, lunch and dinner. All the Bueno Nacho 'food' he'd been living on for the past and present days came up foul mash as Shego leapt up on her seat and the henchmen backed into their respective corners.

Her nerves might be ruined, some of them forever, but she could still dodge projectile puke like the best of 'em. "_Jesus,_" she said, upper lip curling. She backed away towards the open door, where the henchmen were hastily filing out.

A female officer grabbed her by the arm as soon as her feet hit the ground. "Come on," she said.

"Don't rush me," she shot back, but it was half-hearted, and the officer did little more than grunt. As she was hustled along, she stole a last glance at Drakken. It was a hell of a coincidence that his salt-stained eyes just happened then to look up from his muddied lap. He looked her right in the eye, entire body shuddering with a sniffle that sent snot dribbling down his face as he wheezed like a dying dog. She could see in his slump and the constant bob of his throat that he wasn't anywhere close to done. And they were _not _grabbing him like that. They'd let him puke his guts out in that tight, dark place and never lose any sleep over it. And if she'd felt even the slightest bit sorry for him that night, she would have said _something_. _Anything_.

But she was saving all the sorry for herself.

Drakken felt the rib-tucked rapier in him tugged here and there, tearing him to shreds as Shego turned around, shoulder rolling, away, aside, not here, _there_ and making way away.

His tummy stung and again he couldn't stop himself. He felt like he'd swallowed a grater as bile dribbled from his lips. He tried to bring a hand across his clammy forehead and one cuffed wrist tugged at the other.

_Not like this, _he tried to cry. But all came out ragged huffs and puffs, sounds too wet and discordant to form words.

* * *

She thought about him one sundown evening. Actually she'd been thinking of him the whole time, but always in asides, accepting (_after_ several headache-inducing days) that he'd be there a while.

Fine by her. He was easy to keep there as long as she kept a constant buzz going in her head. But one day while the sun was drooping, she sat tight and stared at it through her window. A perfectly good bottle was left uncorked in her sink as she rubbed at her wrists. And she couldn't explain it. It wasn't because she felt like it. She'd have held it off longer if she could stand it. But it was _exhausting _to smile and sigh away, feeling at her temple every now and then, wondering if resistance to alcohol poisoning came with the comet. _What comes up stays up,_ she thought dismally.

And just like the real Doctor D, he seized at the sober moment, twirling a hundred and twenty one percent of her attention around his fingers, trying to spread it out like play-dough and make it last. She'd have smiled at the thought pre-Diablo Day.

She'd left him there a month.

"Eh," she said, lips falling as she tugged the blinds shut. A month and four days if you counted Eddy and Junior.

"Oh, for." She slapped a hand to her head, surprised just a little bit when the other didn't come along. He wasn't surprised, she bet-he couldn't be, he was still in them.

Shego felt like being bludgeoned. Handy, dandy way to get her mind off things. But no one was offering and she'd never a' let them.

She strode over to her drawer and wrenched it open, lock snapping like a twig _(or a bone)_. No time for the key, she needed something _now_. Her eyes flitted twice over the grain before she settled on a raspberry bottle of polish. Ugh. Crappy California brand. A _kid _woulda been proud of that dink.

"_Uh…thanks?"_ was what she distinctly remembered saying to the hornball that'd thought _this_ would cheer her up. And here she was, snatching it up. Maybe she should give him a call.

_Yeah, no._

"You're getting burnt as soon as I'm done," she said, setting the bottle on a table as she threw her legs across a nearby chair. And let herself _think _for once, really think as she tugged the cap round.

Her powers were fine. A week after everything, she lit up in the relative safety of her own cell. She'd been glaring daggers at anyone who'd even thought to cross her beforehand, but even _they _noticed that the shoving and the pummelling had come distinctly plasma-free. She was well past desperate by the time she'd thrown her hands out, begging and pleading for it to be true and not true.

True because if it was, she didn't have to regret a thing she'd said on Diablo Day. Not true because she was going to die in here if it was.

She blinked down. The plastic cap was crushed between her fingers. She brushed most of it off against the table and started with the brush against her thumb.

If it tickled she didn't notice. That was how it had started. Diablos and the day literally up in flames. Doctor Drakken-_Drew Theodore P. Lipsky_ as her maman called it, was a mass murderer. And she was an accessory. If Global Justice's hardasses weren't bashing her door down, it was only because she had friends in the lowest of the low places.

Like Midas. Not bad with his golden touch.

But she'd never done it before, and she wondered if they knew that. Oh, she'd _tried_. No one, not even herself could deny that she'd dumped Kim Possible in a vat of _uh-who-cares_ and thrown in the blender blades for good measure. There was malice aforethought and there was whatever she'd always been playing at. Kim Possible she could kill and sleep right-side up the day after.

_And you're sure about that,_ came a painfully droll voice that tried and failed to shame her. Sounded like her. Wasn't her. Way too much of a bleeding heart. But she kept its snark apart from the fact.

Because the little miss messiah in her was right about one thing. She _hadn't _been sure of it that day. She could match Drakken in grin and stride as she hit all the buttons she needed to turn Kimmy into a frappe, but when they'd actually come down, she'd-she'd-

She'd froze. Then she'd bolted. Come back a few seconds later and brought them up with no idea what she'd find. Confirmation, she guessed.

She'd understood then why Drakken made his traps so impersonal. And walked away from them _every_ _time_.

She applied raspberry to her pinkie like something to be over with, not giving a toss that she practically drenched it.

She was in it for good now. Long-term, long haul, however the hell you wanted to put it. Go and co were never taking her back. There was going on a property-pounding spree and there was setting cities on fire, property, people and all. _Fine by me_, she thought, and she meant it. Didn't mean it didn't sting less.

She wanted to turn back the clock five months and slap herself over the head, the night that Drakken had gone for broke and broke himself. _What the hell are you thinking, _she'd say, _snap out of it and then snap the Doc out of it. _

The thought didn't once occur to her to leave. Maybe because she'd been well in it by then. Maybe because she'd really thought _this _would be the one, and somehow it still felt like it was. And maybe because for all his fits and faults, Doctor D wasn't a bad person.

It sounded like a stupid excuse, but it wasn't stupid or an excuse. It was the weirdest _part_. She'd known it the second she walked through their door that Drakken wasn't a hard-noser for the gig. He was so-so _not _a villain in his own time it wowed her. Yeah, she'd busted the bad guys in their pajamas before, but she'd never _ever _seen them waddle around their own lairs, belting out the beats to some yester-year boy band _in _said pajamas_._ She'd never seen a villain threaten the world with a laser bigger than her had-been backyard and immediately stuff his face with Snickers once he was off-air. She'd never met a villain who wasn't eyeballing her when they didn't think she was looking until Drakken. Passing, angsty glances with no shame that _never_ went below her neck. Like he needed her silent permission, or a pat on the back or something. She'd given him both on their first run, and the loon had grinned bashfully like she'd pinned a medal on him. The tight-lipped, no-teeth kind that screamed _gee, you're swell!_ and on anyone else would've looked passive aggressive.

She'd scratched her name on the contract-how freakin' rich was that, a _contract?_-and never looked back. And she knew deep down, powers or no, that she never would.

Yeah. _This_ guy she could see spending half his college year in a locker. _This _guy she'd throw an arm across from any kick-flipping teens. _This _guy a murderer? She didn't buy it.

The blinds flashed.

She stopped her brush mid-stroke. Sweat lined her hairline. _Oh, for-_

At the sound of thunder she picked up the polish and ran from the villa's living room, heart racing like it had then. Why the heck was she _like _this? Lightning couldn't kill her, even if it struck her twice-she'd figured _that _on Diablo Day-and still she couldn't stand at the sight of it.

She stumbled into a room without windows, kicking a wool rug aside as her wine-stained fingers felt for a switch she didn't find that night. There was no flash in here but she could _hear_ it, feel it resounding in her bones and she was suddenly glad she'd let that bottle drip. She backed herself into a corner, toothpick of a brush brandished at the door as the hallway it led from turned pitch white.

No rain. Just thunder. She vaguely recalled the Doc 'splaining it to her once. Shame she'd cut him off.

There was nothing to do but keep count. She eyeballed a clock on a close-by stand on a close-by table, watching the hands _tick-tick-tick _along as she raised her free hand now and then to swipe at the bridge of her nose. The storm was on its fourth bolt by the time she could breathe again. She lowered the brush after a while and kept at it. But it felt _torturous_ now, like someone was licking her fingers and for whatever degenerate reason she was letting them.

Degenerate. She hated that word. She'd heard it once, thought it once and thought 'never again'.

"First time for everything," she said aloud. She stopped with the polish after a while. Her hands were so shaky, she was batting red between her knuckles.

Yeah. She guessed it suited her. But she'd never tell a soul she wasn't proud of it.

Across the Atlantic, Drakken pushed checkers across cold cardboard and kept count.

They were zero years in and one thousand, three hundred and sixty-five people had died.

* * *

**Particular inspiration taken from Purplegirl761's take on So the Drama in The Princess and the Dragon. **


	3. Chapter 3

At the sound of a billion-million firecrackers going off, Drakken jumped. _Panic! _was his first thought, but he was already doing that so he whipped his head around, up down, left, right-

Right. Drakken stared that-a-ways, where a black and green-spiked tower stabbed at the clouds, a sight for sore eyes. Seeing it from so far away sent his head spinning. It shuddered like the last he'd seen of her, its broken top an anglerfish gnashing on fire and smoke the moment before it tottered and stilled. Drakken frowned.

Hm. He thought they'd have blown the thing sky high. Maybe they really _had_ tried to blow it up with firecrackers.

Drakken shook off a long-distanced memory. No. That wasn't right. They had aplenty of explosives. Maybe they'd gotten bored and wandered off? She'd always said they were a bunch of _'hurr-durr degenerates'_. It might have tickled him if the word from her didn't sound so off-

His hackles rose as the tower started again. Its spikes were the first to come off, hitting the ground with a _thud_ that he felt from here. Drakken's eyes ran over its middle, not realising what he was looking for until the whole thing collapsed over Shegoton-_Middleton_ a time ago; maybe now again. A grey-black-grey cloud kicked up and petered out on the city's edges, and even from miles away he could imagine the grit being gnashed between people's teeth. The thought came before he could stop it.

_She's in there! _It sent his feet shuffling forward. _She needs me! _

He shook his head viciously, wrist stinging with the force of it. No no _no_, he was _free_, and there was somewhere he needed to be, sohe had to _tail it high already!_

Huffing, his feet started again, but he was still looking right and ran _right_ into something cold and hard and steely.

"Gah!" he started, flipping his good hand out and bashing it aside. The red streaks across his arms flared up as he hissed. "Have you _no _decency," he started, before realising he was talking to a dented trash can.

"Ah. Yes. Well." His eyes shot everywhere across the suburbs, back burning under the hidden sun. This was _exactly_ the last place he needed to be. All that had to happen now was someone to open their door and gawk at him, and say something along the lines of "_you're blue!" _and draw their conclusions from there, all other blue people they knew notwithstanding. And then he really would be baloney.

_Baloney. _His first thought was _(Shego)_ the Supreme One and he cringed from it instinctively. His second thought was food and he regretted it instantly. His stomach put the boots to itself and started kicking. Oh, how he wished the palace pantry was still intact…

Drakken jerked his head at the sound of a slew of swear words, muffled by a fast-unlocking door. He jerked his head back at the trash can and deduced it was most likely theirs. Deducing that, he deduced that the _dented_ trash can was most likely theirs. Which meant he was most probably _not_ being invited to tea time, which meant-

Drakken bolted down the street, hearing a "_Hey!_" behind him as might-be-spring tickled his ears. Hard to tell when the sky was green. Much too much monotony. Couldn't the grass be blue to balance it out? He'd asked _(Shego) _the Supreme One once and she'd had a charged collar for him.

Then _every_onewas opening their doors-or maybe he was imagining the constant, deafening cries to _"Stop!" "Thief!" "Murderer!"_ _"Drakken!"_ He couldn't tell and didn't want to care.

Feet fumbling on a corner, he turned a sharp ninety-degree angle, eyes flying to a long white picket fence as he ran with his left wrist tucked to his chest. Something was on him like a shadow, ready to wrench him by the shoulder and he didn't stop because if he was caught now he knew he was _going to die o please don't let me die-_

_Zig and zag, _he thought in a panic. If it worked on crocodiles, it probably worked on suburbanites. He hadn't tried it on either but there was only one way of knowing. _Zig and zag!_

_Into the fence? _

_No, into the void. YES INTO THE FENCE! _

He bashed through the fence, feeling a momentary pang at the still-wet paint before he carried on through someone else's backyard.

"Sorry!" he yelled at the occupied doghouse as he ran past it, wide, moon-shiny eyes peering out. He would've thrown a bone but he only had his own. His feet ran him through the other end of the fence, readied to stumble on and found air. Jerking his eyes from the fluffy doggy's raised ears, Drakken looked down at one heck of a drop he was plummeting his way down.

_Ooh._

He flung his arms back just as his elbows grazed the grass, grabbing for-oh, heavens, _anything_.

_Grass. Dirt. More dirt_. Er. Tenuous at best. His wrist squealed, stinging at its sudden spin, and it was all he could do to wince. His legs were kicking well over the edge, but if he could just-

Drakken jumped at the sound of a barking dog. He started to turn and realised he couldn't, not unless he planned to make a pretzel of himself or let go. The dirt was coming fast apart between his fingers.

"Bad doggy," he yelped over his shoulder, "bad! Stop it! _Please_! Please _just give me one break_, just the _one_, the one's all I need and you'll never see me again, _never ever_!"

He stopped his mid-tantrum mid-air; his grip was hopeless now and considering all the wiggling he had no one to blame but himself. There was a spiteful silence. Drakken flinched at the feeling of a slimy, damp nose rubbing against his left wrist, accompanied by the occasional growl. A stabbing, sharp-then-dull tingle started down his arm. He clamped his eyes and jaw shut, the muffled screams staying in his throat.

_That-is very painful. I would rather you not!_ But he couldn't even get the words out it hurt so bad. The bad dog went on, sniffing and pawing at his wrist as if it knew exactly what it was doing. Or worse yet-_hadn't the slightest idea what it was doing_. And then how was he supposed to blame the stupid thing? A snout pressed against the break in his wrist, forcing an "ow-_ah_!" out of Drakken and maybe a tear or three.

This was-how did he-this-this was all the buffoon's fault! Couldn't even trust him to be a decent sneak, but the second he'd lost all hope, the second the knee-jerk urge to _protect Shego_ had overpowered the last-second plan, _oh, no no_, turned out he'd been hiding enough muscle behind that headband to pirouette Drakken's wrist and send him flying. The _injustice_ of it! Had he had that on him the whole time and only _now_ pulled it off? The mendacity! The deceit…!

Yes. Well. The buffoon wasn't the only one guilty there, was he. His sight swam. He was a stupid, dumb, _complete idiot_-occasionally a _genius_, sometimes a _friend_-and now, now definitely a _traitor_.

A pair of jaws chose then to clamp over his bum wrist. Drakken would've screamed but his throat had dried up. There was only a breathless gasp before he swung the joint to his chest and realised he'd let go. As he fell, watching the backyard and the Drakken-sized hole in its otherwise pristine picket fence grow smaller and smaller, wind batting at his ears, he caught bemusement in those big and black and wide eyes peering over the edge. Neither of them broke off until he hit the ground.

And then he felt like a crash camera, jolting here and there, _everywhere_, all the sounds he'd seen in those videos that made him dizzy right up in his ears-the only difference the real-time feel of every rough and tumble. After years of cold, dry and parched palace air, the sensation of his everything tumbling against the wet weeds of a still-damp hill was surreal. He might have enjoyed it more if he wasn't half-sure a small-large mob was going to beat him to the bottom and beat him to _death!-_

Gritting his teeth, Drakken made himself as innocuous as he possibly could cartwheeling down a hill. The three-hundred-sixty-degree flip-flops were as constant as they were unhelpful. An involuntary _"Ow!" "Argh!" "Please-" _left him before his head collided with a bit of wood and he finally, mercifully ground to a stop, elbows and knees burning.

Head roaring, Drakken blinked the dirt out of his eyes. "I'm okay," he mumbled.

_Nobody cares_, screamed the green-eyed sky.

_I know that, _he almost yelled back.

And in that single moment he must have resembled a kettle, because he hated it, hated her, hated the whole lot of it so much he was a little afraid he was going to melt into a magma-like substance. It was the first thing he'd seen at the start of all this-all this _treachery_-jumping into a pleasant red swirl that wouldn't have looked out of place on a cinnamon roll and finding himself in Hell.

Less fire, no pitchforks, no devils-but a slightly too-tight collar and a big red button to go with it, and an ex-friend who was sometimes a friend-friend and made his heart hurt when she switched back made up the relative equivalent.

Drakken grimaced, hand to his head as he glanced aside, expecting nothing and noticing a wide-eyed father, mother and son that he had just personally directed a full-frontal assault against.

Rocketing up, Drakken stared at them. The couple backed well off, staring at his flushing purple, grass-stickered form. Their Shego-styled coats were resentfully unruffled. _Wise of you, _he might've tittered twenty years ago, _prospective subjects of Drakkenville! And dressed for the part, too!_

But one long look at them, and he knew they knew who he was. One big old huff left his chest. Looking down, he noticed a picnic basket. Ah. That must have been what he'd headbutted. And if his eyes did not deceive, there was a picnic _blanket_ to boot-

_Food!_

He seized at its much-knotted grip with sweaty palms, ready to _sob_ into it before realising it was very much not his.

"I'm-er. Commandeering this on behalf of the Supreme One." He shook it for good measure.

"If you have any complaints…" his head blanked out on that sentence. "Don't."

_Idiot, _he screamed at himself. On behalf of the Supreme One? _That _Supreme One whose tower you could see collapsing from _miles _away? _Idiot, you complete idiot-_

Drakken restrained a flinch as the mother and father nodded their heads off, "oh yessir, yessir". Turning, he looked back. They couldn't have seen it from here. A distinct lack of shouting and screaming slowly but surely laid him to rest. Really. He fell to the floor, amazed that the breeze hadn't bowled him back. He was much too heavy for that now. It should have been a relief and wasn't. Grabbing their son by the arm, his family started to drag him away. "Come on, let's go."

He didn't. His blue eyes were wide and glossy with terror, but Drakken didn't miss his frequent glances towards his feet.

_Well, I do have two of them. _But that didn't make sense-so did the kid. Drakken followed his eyes down, glancing at the double-decker plushie entrenched in his lap. Then he did a double take. And bit back a squeal so hard the skin broke. Oh, today _was_ a day!

He aborted a squeeze of a snugly scarfed Snowman Hank. Knowing his own strength, he'd break the skin and send the stuffing flying. Where did they get it? If they'd been discontinued, and they had, he _knew_ they had-a vintage? A hand-me-down? Running his hands along his own strangely slack face, Drakken could have cried. It wasn't even _Christmas!_ Oh, what did he care if they couldn't keep track of the seasons-he hadn't either!

_But it's not yours. _

"Oh, bah humbug!" he barked, brow furrowing. Then paused. Oh. He _wasn't_ saying that ironically over a warm cup of cocoa moo.

And if he was mister Scrooge, he _had_ to be doing something wrong. Under that long, snow-white whisker, Drakken could've sworn Snowman Hank was frowning up at him.

Drakken looked up. The kid was further away now. His eyes were on the treasure between his hands. He wanted to keep it. He wanted to hold it to his chest so bad, brush the waiting tears out of his eyes with it until it was positively soaked yet unmelted. But looking into that kid's big, blue, ready-to-spill-over eyes was like staring straight into a timestream.

_I need this too! _he wanted to say. _I need this just as much as you do, and probably a little bit more all things considered!_

"Oh, just take it already," he moaned, sticking it out as he looked away. From the corner of his eyes, he saw the kid's shoulders rise, him breaking away from his parents as he ran forward. He stopped in front of him, eyes still wide and wanting. Drakken handed it to him by the limbs-his hands were much too sweaty, and the thing much too precious for a simple palm-to-palm transferral.

The boy lingered then, hands embracing his off-season fuzzy buddy as he looked up at Drakken. His mouth opened, he glanced back at his parents, father catching up, back at him, spurted a quick "thank you" and sank back into his dad's arms.

It felt like a fever, what ran through him at the words. Drakken's face crumpled up entirely involuntarily, insides screaming like a scientist vindicated. He made a silent promise to sigh in his own time. The fellow's father gave a terse smile. "We'll be going now," he said hastily, and did so.

_You'd better, _came the sudden, violent thought, and Drakken shook it off like the heebie-jeebies, not missing the father's flinch as he ushered them faster along. _That _pissed him off too, but he clenched his fists, felt Shego's claws still burning against his arms and willed the moment along.

It was the _roids_, so to speak. It wasn't him.

Well, yes it was him, it was him with a crank and he hardly ever had the strength to stop himself but he hadn't even _tried_ when-

He shook his head. "_Please_, no," he said, "not now."

He obliged himself, blocking the thought out in the short time that he'd broken the basket in two and everything edible went down his throat. He stopped half-empty because there was nothing left. Sweating as he tossed a crunched water bottle (into the basket of course, he wasn't a _litterer_), he threw the picnic blanket up, starting a search for crumbs, just-just _tiny_ little crumbs that might've snuck through the fabric, before stopping himself. Falling face-first into the folds, Drakken sniffled.

_That was really stupid, Drakken, _came a voice slow and patronising. He stiffened, anticipating a shock that never came. Scrabbling at his neck for a collar that wasn't there, he started.

His Adam's apple felt-off. Like it was bobbing against air. Just floating out and feeling at a nothing space. He raised a hand to it that flinched back when it bobbed.

_You're free, _came his own voice. _You're free now._ Well, he didn't _feel _free. He felt like he was deflating. Literally. He reached for his cheek again and realised. He was _holding_ to something. Not just holding to something but stretching it out, would have toyed with it if he couldn't feel his lips shaking through the tug. Whatever _(Shego) _the Supreme One had stabbed him with wasn't lasting. It had chosen _now_ of all times to wear off, and there had to be a science to that but he didn't have the time for it. The thought brought him so much relief he could have choked on it. That or the still-going-down shreds of a foot-long sandwich.

He put his hand to his mouth, begging himself to _please, just please keep it down_; and in the vacant, little-valued moment in his mind, what he'd been keeping the distance from caught up. Slammed into him full-force and sent his fists balling against the ground.

Drakken made to stand, shaky hands pushing him up. He fell and knew perfectly well why. "Not _now_," he said, and tried again. He'd have argued the semantics on whether he was standing. More like hovering at a hunch, legs shaking in the breeze. Not the moment's breeze, which was hot and sweet and wringing so much sweat from him he swore it hurt. There was a breeze inside of him, awful cold, dispersing blood and something else to his stiffening limbs. He shook it off and started towards_ Nevada state, rubbing his gloves together as he flatlined the robot's flight functions above the site. The sound of the ceiling snapping in two was music to his still-fuzzy ears. _

_Drakken stopped for a moment to run his tongue along the front of his glove. Yeuch. Still tasted like he'd been sucking on pennies. All he could remember of yesterday was sneaking along some ramp, and the rest was a muddy rush of lights he made non-sense of. No matter! _

_He squinted at the scramble of colours on the thermal screen…there! A reddish-yellow-blue figure's hands flared up on the screen, and unless Pyro Pete was a pervert to boot it couldn't be anyone but-_

_Drakken slammed the button with his fist, restraining a wince as the visor went down. Cranking a lever, he bent the bot forward, hurling his head over its top as he grinned at a grinning-right-back Shego. The saying struck him-once in a blue moon. Oh, if only it was, today would be perfect! _

_She leapt up as he shot out a gloved hand, hauling her over in the cacophony of alarms, bells and panicked yells. As he lightly pressed the visor button and twisted it upright, he turned to her. Jumping up from a sprawl on the floor, she started towards a chair like the past fifty seconds hadn't happened. _

_But he knew they had. The words burned on the tip of his tongue like right-out-of-the-fridge fizz. _

_His neck pricked for him to get the heck out of Dodge already and she smelled faintly of Commodore Puddles, but the breakout and the Fifty-One fiasco was the last thing on their minds. He leaned towards her, still grinning as her eyes rolled in anticipation. _

"_You know, just 'cause I say it every time, doesn't mean you have to." _

"_Heya, chump." _

He kept himself upright for a few more seconds before his knees failed him, crumpling back to the blanketed ground. He couldn't. He just _couldn't_. He couldn't pretend she'd never ever mattered to him, that they'd never been friends, not when the sky was still green and nothing had gone the way he'd wanted it to.

Was that what they'd been? _Friends_? He pictured Shego grinning and thought an emphatic _yes!_ He pictured the Supreme One sneering and shook like a lout going to the gallows.

He didn't know, and it hurt him almost as bad as one long night's needle.

_At least she didn't bring those back, _he thought, and he clung to that. His memories were dim of poring over those old pirate books with a faulty flashlight, so many years younger and sucking on his braces, but from what he could recall the gallows had been _awful. _How had _anyone_ ever gotten a kick out of watching bulging, wide eyes, arms and legs kicking and flailing-

He ground his knuckles against his forehead until it purpled. _Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up-_

It was like That Night had never ended. At least then there had been a screen between him and everything else. At least then he'd had the chance to jerk his head away and pretend that nothing else was happening but the elimination of Kim Possible, but his grasping at the pecking order like a packet of straws and punching it into the place that Drew Lipsky had _needed_.

Drakken curled into a ball after a beat, faintly glad he could manage that, hands kept far away from the rest of him. He wanted to cry but knew he'd give himself a headache trying. Stretching out his nails under which the blood had dried, he huffed. It didn't comfort him in the slightest that all of it was his. It was the picture that told a thousand words, and for once Drakken grasped the message in the metaphor. There were thousands on his hands, thousands he'd kept count of and one he'd almost added. _One_. Just the one. Who could have told? What would have been the difference?

The selfish answer was that he _knew _her. 1,365 blended into his head, sometimes bled into his _dreams_ but their faces were different all of the time. They could hover and howl and call him _murderer_ until he broke and bawled in their faces that _he_ _knew that_ but they were never the same, never ever. He'd never known them as anything more than a _statistic _and if he closed his eyes and screamed over himself he could almost believe they were just that.

But Shego was his...was his…he didn't even know at this point. But he knew her, had known her and had wanted to, always, always would starting from the day she'd borrowed a quill and scribbled a pseudonym on the slip that specifically said _sign name here_.

If he _had_ done it, he was sure, he would have driven himself off the deep end. Not the ones with a bottom, not the ones you could shrug off. Because the idea of Shego hovering over him, a named face to the nameless, faceless crowd drove his thumb into his mouth, all of mother's lessons unlearned.

He hadn't done it. A spark started in his chest that was too quickly snuffed out.

_But you tried. _

He polished his nail short, blood and all. He'd never considered himself a biter, but now couldn't possibly be a better time to start.

* * *

Shego had no idea how long she'd been running before the tower blew up behind her. She'd made a distance enough from it, but no one for miles away could have missed the sound or the sight. She was skirting along a forest before the _BOOM _froze her stiff and she turned back the way she'd came.

She stared, in a state of frankest shock as the eyesore that was her despotic life's work came crashing down. A tiny, tiny part of her felt a pang as the spikes came crashing down, gouging buildings by the wayside-she'd be real stupid to not think people hadn't been hurt or _died _from that-or maybe the rebels, if they'd any integrity left in them had evacuated the place-

She closed her eyes a moment. _Numbers to numbers_, she thought_. _

But when she opened her eyes again, saw all of it melting into the ground, a giant, stifling cloud of smog that made her eyes sting from _here_-all of it, literally_ gone_ in a puff of smoke-she couldn't help her first response.

"No, no, _no_," she started. Her throat flared like it'd taken a wasp on the inside and she stopped herself short.

But she was seeing so much red right now-if she didn't hit something, she just might burst into flames. Eyes twitching, she settled on the nearest tree. Marching up to it with her fists enflamed, she ripped into its trunk without rhyme or rhythm. Damp brown broke into light brown broke into a crisp almost-white, and she smoked straight through _that_ too, her powers tweaked so high her hand went through it like warm butter. Calmed not at all, she tried and failed to pull it free.

"Oh, for the _love_ of-" putting a foot to the base, she lit up her stuck hand and started to wrench it loose. Then stopped as a shadow fell over her. She looked up at the tree's top half swaying right over her head.

_Cause and effect. Ever occur to you?_

She threw a still-smoking hand up and caught it over her, jerking her other hand free to meet it. _"Jeez,"_ she wheezed, knees begging to buckle. The dirt beneath her feet was suddenly extra slick. Yeah, no. Super-strength hadn't been _her_ shtick.

She huffed at the thought, throwing the three aside before she slumped against what was left of its trunk. Her nose twitched at the smell of burning oak.

She hadn't thought about them in forever. The thought of the people they'd been made her sick.

_Of you? Of them? Of everything?_

She rubbed her nose dry. "Uh, try all of the above?"

Funny. She'd never in the last twenty tears have said that out loud. Maybe she'd forgot to mark herself against the last couple of mind-rays.

_Liar, liar, hands on fire. _

She ground her palms into her eyes until they hurt. She wished. It would be so _easy _to walk away from that. Not literally-if the rebels found her she'd get the wall so fast the bricks would still be setting. But at least her conscience could say she hadn't done it. Who knew-someone would have believed her.

_Drakken would have believed you._

Shego pressed her back harder to the trunk, feeling its residue warmth. The woods seemed a stupider place to be by the second. There was too much cover, too many ways for someone to see her without her knowing and the trees were too tall, pressing in and over her with every extra inch they had. She wiped at her nose again.

Oh for crying out loud, couldn't she just get _over_ herself?

_Nope. _

She felt her shoulders dragging against the tree trunk as she swallowed and her throat stung, heart throbbed, head hurt. The effort of raising her hand to swipe at her wet nose again took everything out of her. From very, very far away, she realised she was having a heart attack.

"_Ow,"_ she breathed. She put a heavy hand to her chest and squeezed, dull to the claws as she hunched over. "Ow. _God_." Lips twitching, she bit back a cry. It pained her to swallow anything, much less blood, but she managed it as she twitched defiantly in her _way_-premature grave.

She wasn't done. No way. No _way_ was she going out like this. She was going to fight it, damnit, fight to last _light_ if she had to!

_You're going to fight a heart attack?_

If she'd met her younger self now, she'd have tagged her lifelong for the Attitude Adjustment Centre. The thought froze her solid as her heart soldiered on. Turning her eyes to the sky, her mouth opened in a hiss. It was all shades of green-the dark leaves and branches almost but not quite covering the sky. She closed her eyes, trying not to writhe. There were a lot of things she wanted to see right now, but green was so low on her miles-long list it was sitting in the Mariana Trench.

_I want-hydrangeas_, she said in a silent plea. Someone had to be listening. _And mom. And dad. And-_

The vice tightened on her chest. She felt like she was going to explode.

_I'll take Hego and Mego and the Wegos. Fine. Whatever. _

She cracked her eyes open, the world awash in all shades of green she couldn't see clearly. Throwing an arm up, she hid her tears from no one. She was going to die. She was going to die. She was going to die _here _in the middle of freaking nowhere and she wasn't even close to ready, she hadn't made any plans, she hadn't told-

The Supreme One threw her eyes wildly about, wide, wondering _where the hell are you? _She always thought if she was going to die, twenty years then and twenty years in, that Drakken would be there. Head hitting the ceiling, arms flapping about with _no_ clue what to do, but there. And she'd always pictured that if the day ever came, she'd be calming _him_ down. For his sake as much as hers.

She didn't want to go out like this-she _really _didn't want to go out like this-one arm dug in her chest, the other feeling for a hand that _wasn't there_.

She exhaled bits at a time through a grimace. How long did it _take_? She hadn't wanted to finish that thought and her heart was still burning up behind its cage and she couldn't get any of her other thoughts together and she couldn't move on from her last one and she just-wanted to _die already_.

A lightbulb exploded. The dark rolled in and she leaned towards it, head to her shoulder as her whole world came to a slant.

* * *

Shego jumped at the sound of a door being booted open. "Did it work?" she said, back to the Doc, but she could _smell_ the answer from a mile away. A pile of emptied-out cans beside the bathroom made a clatter as they were kicked aside.

"_No_, it didn't work!" Drakken bounced up beside her chair, stopping to pluck a tomato-stained spaghetti strand from behind his ear with an automatic "ew."

"You sure?" she said, gliding her file over a claw. "If you left the tub running it'll still be good for tomorrow."

"_Gkkk-rnnghh_-SHEGO!"

Her lips twitched, not for the first time today or the past year. Jeez, she didn't regret this at _all_.

_Hego, eat your heart out. _

"This is a _disaster!_ This is horrible! Why is this _happening_ to me?" Drakken said, probably trying at pacing. He more-like skittered in front of her, hands up in the air like _that guy _would clear things up. If she didn't know better, she'd have thought the guy had a problem with staying still.

"What went _wrong_?" He turned his hands to her then, like she was going to hand off the solution in solid form. "I mean-how-what-how the _blazes_-_nngh-gkk-aagh_!" A smattering of syllables were pulled together and exploded in no discernible order.

Hands flying for a high-up mirror frame, he wrenched it to his face, staring mournfully at it. "Oh, Shego! It's all over! I'm a joke, a _blasted_ joke! O, whip me ye devils from another wrench again! Blow me about in a tepid breeze! Roast me in cocoa! Wash me in spaghetti-O gulfs of liquid _fire_! O, Shego! Shego! O…!" And falling to his knees, sobbing like a windshield wiper, Doctor Drakken was the spitting image of a suffering saint.

O, o, indeed. She could have watched it for weeks, but the guy had a job to do, and this wasn't helping.

"It's not…that bad," she said at last.

Drakken's shot up like a shuttle for take-off. "Not bad? _Not bad?_ Shego, I'm _blue_!" Drakken dragged his hands along his perma-powdered cheeks. "This is the most _far away_ from not bad I could get!"

"_Furthest_, you mean?"

"Oh, what-_ever_," Drakken said, ponytail flapping about. It was a happy miracle _that_ hadn't turned blue too. "You know what I mean! I mean, what supervillain with even apretension to respectability has pastel skin? I'm _absurd_! I'm ridiculous! I'm _idiotic_! I'm-" he turned to Shego.

"I'm-I'm…I'm sorry."

Shego unclenched her fists against the armrests. "Yeah. I'd hope you were, _sport_."

Drakken winced. "No, really. I am sorry. It's just-" Drakken pointed at himself. "Look at me! Do I look _scary_ to you?"

Shego snorted. "Doctor D, you weren't scary _before _this. You looked ready to donate sweaters to Middleton door-by-door."

In his new blue skin, Drakken's blush showed up purple. She had to bite her cheek _real_ hard not to laugh. "Oh, thanks for the pick-me-up Shego, it's _exactly _what I need right now!"

Glancing away from her a moment, his breath caught. "What am I going to tell mother?" he breathed, in a trying-for-low voice she probably wasn't meant to hear.

But she did. She froze on her glove's pinkie.

_Drakken has a mom? _

There was a topic they hadn't touched. Ever. She'd been more than fine with that. But, uh, jeez-she'd kinda just…assumed? That he'd gotten the short end of that stick too. Made it easier to see it his way (not by much, mind, but). Huh. Turned out everything she'd had on him had gone through a faulty lens. Still-she tilted her head his way-

_Eh. I see it. _

"Doc, come on," she said, tossing her file aside as she stood up. "I mean, you were being an ass about it just now-do you think I _care_ if someone notices I'm green?"

Drakken blinked. "Do you?"

She shrugged. "Sometimes."

Where the heck had _that_ come from?

Shego shook her head. "Not the point. Look, you met me. You hired me. I'm standing in front of you right now. Did you freakat any point in between?"

Drakken put a hand to his chubby old chin and squinted at a stalagmite. Ah. She forgot who she was asking a _rhetorical question_.

"Well," he said as his hand fell, "no. I did wonder why you went through the effort of all that makeup though."

Shego stared at him. He stared right back. She counted down the seconds.

_Eight, nine, ten-_

You could _hear_ the hamster-wheel in his head spinning, jaw dropping as his eyes widened. "You mean that _isn't-_?"

She gave herself a cursory once-over. "Doc, if I was wearing that much of _anything_, I wouldn't be here."

"Wha-_how_?"

She gave her bone-dry nose a wipe. "How what?"

"How'd you go _green_? The," he gestured her-a-ways, "not the environmental. Though that would be a very respectable commitment…"

Drakken said something. Probably. He must've but she was so far away from him in the moment she didn't hear a thing. There was a treehouse beneath her feet and there was the sour smell of salt and vinegar chips. There was an all colours-comet coming closer towards an open window until it blocked out and swallowed up the sky. There was impact as her entire world came to a slant, the smell of smoke, burning leaves and far, far away, burning skin-

She ran a hand along her arm and checked for splinters that weren't there.

Teeth grit, she threw the thought out by its tail. "Nothing."

Drakken stopped. "Nothing?"

She shook her head one way and the other, like the screws were too loose. "Just…don't."

Drakken's mouth opened, closed and opened again. "Okay," he said.

She liked him even more for that.

"My point was," she said after a beat, "even if the blue-tack do's here to stay (he scowled but said nothing), it's not the end of the world. I mean-yeah, people will eyeball you the first few days. Some of 'em'll probably stare. You can pick out your friends from the people who don't care."

She stopped short of saying she hadn't made many, before _or _after.

She didn't have to. "Like you?" he said, before wincing. She would'a too. In this business, that was just _begging_ for a backstabbing.

"Mmm," she hummed. "Can't say I'm judging."

Drakken frowned. "You were judging twenty minutes ago."

She rolled her eyes (and relaxed). "Yeah," she drawled, "because you were planning a spaghetti bubble bath. I'm pretty indiscriminate when it comes to _dumb ideas_."

"That was _not_ a dumb idea! Red is right next to blue on the colour spectrum!"

"_Aaand_ what do you have to smell for it?"

Drakken sniffed. "Well, it worked in theory."

She couldn't help it. Throwing her head back, she laughed. This was all just so…_stupid. _

"Sh-_Shego_!" he said, and the blush rushed back, and _that_ was even better. "This _isn't funny_!"

"_Alright_, alright, alright," she said, getting her breath back. "Seriously? You'll be fine, Doc."

Some weird, wobbly smile showed up on his face. "You really think so?"

She nodded. "Hey, if it worked for me. And besides, you got a gimmick now."

"A-a gimmick?"

"Yeah. You're blue. No one's got a thing on you."

_That _got him. "You're right! Why-Dementor's just _trite_ with his mediocre melanin! He'll practically throw himself on my suede-shade!"

She sniffed once, twice, thrice. "Sure. You never know."

Drakken threw his palms to his eyes. "And besides, I always did like the colour blue." He lowered them slightly to grimace. "Though I would've liked a darker shade." He glanced down at himself, then back to her, those big, blue and wide eyes asking even _if_ they weren't trying. "Match up with the lab coat, maybe?"

"Nah," she said. "Too monotonous. You're fine like this."

Drakken grinned at her, a dazzling, all-teeth grin too sincere to scream _yes, this car DOES still run like a dream! _

"She-_go_…you're right! You're _brilliant_! You're the-the purple light of a summer night in _Spain_!"

Shego blinked. "You've been to _Spain_?"

"Well. Er. No," he said, "but it's the thought that counts, right?"

"And the all-expenses paid vacation?"

Drakken snorted. "Nice try, Shego."

She sighed. "Worth a shot." She collected her file from the floor. "Well, I'm conked."

As soon as she was upright again, she noticed-heck, how could she have _missed_-Drakken's everything drooping like a dog left out in the rain. "Do you _have_ to go?"

Shego raised an eyebrow. "Uh, yeah. Considering you spent the last twenty minutes of my shift paddling in tomato juice."

Drakken groaned. "You know, the more you say it out loud, the du-_the less ingenious_ I feel!"

Shego cackled. "Hey, this was all you." She turned and made for the door.

Her hand on the doorknob by the time she stopped, remembering something she was half-surprised to. "Oh. And, uh. Don't forget to call your momma, hey?"

Drakken's doe-eyes at seeing her leave blinked back into action. "Oh. Yes. Right." The purple flush was on him again. A tremulous smile was shared between them, though she couldn't figure on her end why. It was the last of his face she saw for the night.

She stopped the door at a crack. The crickets were out already, but she stopped with her back to the doors. A rampage went on opposite. Something thumped, _someone_ whined, and then she heard one of those classy old phone-wheels spinning like crazy.

_That-is-where the heck did you keep that? And why are you using it? _She put her hand to her cheek, half for the heat.

_Better question. Why are you still here? _

Hm. Good question. Good thing she could ignore herself. She took in a mouthful of cold, crisp mountain air and found herself waiting. The image of Drakken twirling the cord in one hand wasn't hard to imagine.

"Mother? Mother? Yes! Hello, mother! How are you? …Oh, that sounds…lovely! …Well, I'm just calling to let you know, that when I show up for Thanksgiving I might be a little bit…erm…blue? …No, no, no! Nothing like that! You see-er, one of my more…_scientifically inclined_ clients came onto my talk-show today with a device. Oh! Beautiful, _beautiful_ thing mother, like you wouldn't be_lieve_! And it would've worked against _Midd_-ah, on some…troublesome patients, with the right adjustments. There was just a slight…hitch to it. And I may have…"

She stood there a while, her breath held even though there was a fat chance he could hear her over himself. It was funny thinking Drakken had a mother. Nah. Funny wasn't the word for it. Surreal was overkill. Nothing worked for whatever she was feeling. She settled on _weird_. Arms crossed against her chest, she heard them talk about little things that didn't matter and she didn't care for-Drakken's day, her day, how he was doing, how _she_ was doing. She only heard Drakken's end of the conversation, but she got the hint enough. Hugbox parent.

_I would have hated one of those. I think. _

If the cold crept through her jumpsuit, she was too busy eavesdropping to notice. After a while she stopped standing on cliff's side and crouched with her ear to the cold steel door. Her nerves were strung worse than the last couple of missions she'd been on.

"Oh, that's nice, that's nice. …Yes. Well. I've got a job to return to. The show must go on, and what…not. Heh-heh. …I love you too, mother. Bye-e."

She jumped as the phone was slammed down. "Well, that wasn't disastrous," she heard, before a grunt. "Oh-_Shego_!"

Standing up, she started back, feeling every hair on her head. Ah, boy. A flurry of excuses came to her, but in the panic of the moment only one of them some sort of sense. It was a hell of a coincidence that the same one was the honest A.

_I had a brain-freeze. _

_I was trying to fix a hinge._

_I'm taking up astronomy, and I came to this decision staring at this light-polluted sky. _

_Uh, I can do whatever I want? _

_I…have no idea. _

"How much effort does it take to close a door?" He sounded closer by sentence's end. "I mean, _really_!" She saw the hint of his lab coat, fluttering between the tiny crack before the steel doors were slammed shut.

Shego stood there a while, swaying. If the wind had blown the right way, right now, it would've knocked her off the cliffside without a protest. She blamed…

_What? _Nobody. She shook her head until it hurt. Scratching at a cheek that had gone olive, she huffed. This was stupid. This was-embarrassing, and _pathetic_ to boot.

Whatever she was feeling right now she wanted to kill it dead. She wasn't going to make a life of this. _No._ _Way._ Away at once with either _or_.

She was all the way down the cliff, in her car, hands on the wheel as she stared at the bright white lights in the town Drakken's lair was sat beside by the time she realised she was angry. Wrenching the keys into the car, she glanced at the time. Twenty minutes. It had felt like an hour.

Alright. Whatever. She'd been an idiot twenty minutes ago. She wasn't thinking anything about anything. And if she was thinking about anything, it was take-out. And if she was thinking about anything else, she didn't have a right to. And if she didn't have a right to it, this was the bit where she _burned_ it. Burnedit to bits and moved on.

She pried her hands free from the wheel and was unsurprised to find scorch marks and smoke. Her hands shook with the need to thump something, but the only thing in distance was her ride home. Eyeballing herself in the rear-view mirror, she huffed. "You _are_ pathetic."

The words came real slow from her lips, slower than she'd have liked. Her heart meandered along, strangely slow. She went for a belt buckle but it kept catching. Her head was so light that after the third tug she tore it free, throwing the strap on her lap. She felt at her temple, the start of a headache there. It didn't help, the sickening smell of rain.

She stopped, blinking. Rain?

* * *

Shego started at a branch's worth of rain dumping down her back. Shivering, she whipped around, disoriented. The reek of petrichor and pinecones was in the air, so strong and so sweet she retched without warning. She cringed as her throat flared up again.

One hand to the trunk as she tried to stand, she winced at the feeling of claw marks on her chest. She turned to the spot she'd been bashing. Around the still-smoking hole, a crisp light-brown had dampened under the…

Shego looked up, droplet landing right in her eye. It stung, she blinked it back and stared. And realised. Blue sky. Navy blue, but blue.

She felt so much relief she could barely stand. And then it hit her in a flash, and she crumpled to the ground again, the hint of mud giving way under her knees as the downpour picked up.

_Relief._ She'd been _relieved_. She'd been so fleetingly relieved for the chance to wipe it all clean, one big, red reset button for everything done to everyone. Damocles dusted. Not another sorry to be said. And it hadn't happened. Worse, it hadn't happened and she had to know, live knowing in excruciating detail she'd rather not _everything_. She brought her hands to her face and scrubbed until it hurt, scrubbed at rain and sweat and tears as she shivered.

Kim Possible had failed the _one_ time she'd needed her not to, and she wanted to kill her even more than before.

No. That was-she'd meant it in the moment but the more she thought of it…she brought her wrist to her forehead, flicking her hair aside with fingers that didn't feel real, trying to get her thoughts together.

No. She didn't want anyone else to die, not anymore. Not even her. The thought of it sent her head into another tailspin.

_You can't be serious. _

Scary, stupid thing was she was.

Through a headache Shego huffed. Twenty years of doing everything in her power to disown it and it'd dug in deeper. Not a hero complex. If she'd had one of those she would've sat down and shut up in Go City. But something she'd been trying to keep a lid on since year one hit her where it hurt, and she let it.

Freeing her hands from her face, she pushed herself up and staggered towards a tree, leaning on it hard as her cold breath came in heaves. She wasn't going out like this. Apparently. She'd lean on every tree in this whole forest if she had to, because she wasn't going out like this.

_Why?_ What in hell was the point of it if she was just gonna collapse and go out anyway? What was she even planning to _do_?

_And when you're out of these woods, how are you going to live with yourself?_

She couldn't answer her own questions. Her head hurt too much for it. All she could do was send one foot trailing after the other, and the other, and the other…


End file.
